Monday, January 06, 2014

Tomorrow, 7 January 2014, will be the 170th anniversary of the birth of Bernadette Soubirous, a miller's daughter born in Lourdes, France, later venerated as a Christian mystic and Saint in the Catholic Church: Saint Bernadette. She was born in 1844, died 1879, aged 35. Her story is well-known, related in the movie Song of Bernadette, and honoured in this Song of Bernadette written by Leonard Cohen, sung here by Jennifer Warnes ~

The early months of 1844 brought forth some rather special natives with fairly unusual natal charts. Personal planets and some outers clustered around "the winter signs" Capricorn/Aquarius/Pisces. Occasionally Moon would be found out on a limb, as in St Bernadette's case. Her chart is below, using data from astro.com.

Some others born during the first half of 1844 have a touch of mysticism in their makeup too - there must've been something in the air during those months! That doesn't apply to the first of the group listed below though.

On another level altogether, and a bit closer to home : Cole Younger - Thomas Coleman "Cole" Younger (born January 15, 1844, 2 weeks after St Bernadette). American Confederate guerrilla during the American Civil War and later an outlaw with the James-Younger gang. He was the eldest brother of Jim, John and Bob Younger. tacitly acknowledged as "the brains" of the gang. He sometimes showed kindness, giving stolen foodstuff to the poor, and among Confederate sympathizers Younger and his cohorts were perceived almost as folk heroes. Their occasional hide-out in the hills of Oklahoma is now known as Robbers' Cave State Park.
(See HERE)

Olney H. Richmond (22 February). American mystic. From a mundane background, he became a feed and grain dealer. However, he had so many "unusual" experiences during the Civil War that he turned to metaphysical study. Richmond later founded the Temple of the Stars and wrote the "Mystic Text Book" for Masons only.

Abdul Baha'i, (23 May). Persian religious leader of Baha'i who aimed to establish a New World Order. The eldest son of Baha'u'llah, he followed the mystic path from age nine and became his father's successor. Abdul-Baha weathered internal strife and religious persecution to establish communities around the world. In 1920, the year before his death, he was knighted by the British government.

Camille Lemmonier (23 March). Belgian novelist, short-story writer, and art critic, one of the outstanding personalities of the 19th-century French literary renaissance in Belgium.

..........under the influence of the naturalism of Émile Zola. Like his other novels, it is a work of great violence, describing characters of unbridled instincts and passions. Happe-Chair (1886)....deals with the life of drudgery led by mill workers. Later, in the work of his middle period, Lemonnier turned to psychological analysis, condemning the conservative tendencies of the bourgeoisie. He then developed a mystical naturalism, as in Le Petit homme de Dieu (1903; “The Little Man of God”).

There's something else worth a mention, it's what blog friend and commenter "mike" calls a "quinky-dink". William Miller (1782-1849), a Baptist preacher, from the United States, credited with beginning the mid-nineteenth century North American religious movement now known as Adventism, predicted that sometime between 1843 and 1844....Jesus Christ will come again to this earth, cleanse, purify, and take possession of the same, with all the saints, sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844.
He didn't. I do wonder, though, whether William Miller had astrological knowledge and had noted the peculiar line up of planets during part of that period.

Hmmm - funny ol' year, 1844!

Postscript
RIP Phil Everly.
There's an old post on Phil and his brother HERE.

Read your older post. I listened to their original music way back then and it was rather revolutionary for the pop at that time. They simply were not comparable to any other performers and their compositions were fresh and unique for that era. Their music became popular at the same time "the blues" came into mainstream attention...jazz was becoming popularized, too, for the middle-class, martini set. It was an interesting time for music crossing-over into different audiences.

An impetus for the introduction of varied musical genres came with the advent of 1950s reel-to-reel tape recorders and high-fidelity record players and records...record speed slowing from 78 rpm to 33-1/3 rpm (long play)...plus the introduction of static-free FM replacing AM for music listening on the radio. The post-war boom era allowed for better incomes and the indulgence of music in the home. This was at the same time as the introduction of TVs as common household "appliances".

Many "things" came together to make it possible for future talented groups to display their wares.

I read the book, "The Reluctant Spiritualist", by N.R. Stuart. It's about two sisters that in 1848, made acclaim as mediums by relaying messages received from "rapping" spirits. All things spiritual and psychic were quite the rage in that era. One of the sisters, many years later, denounced their activity as fraud. But the book leaves it a bit open-ended.

"A Uranus-Pluto synod occurred on December 25, 1850, several months before and within a degree of the Saturn-Pluto synod. The Saturn-Pluto synod occurs opposite Jupiter. The asteroid Pallas also creates synods with Saturn, Pluto and Uranus as well; and a synodic mid-point with Jupiter.

"1850, September - The "Great Slavery Debate" began in the U.S. (leading into the Sept 23, 1851 synod). An intricate package of five bills called "The Compromise of 1850" was passed in the U.S. in September 1850, defusing a four-year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North. (Wikipedia) Although intended to alleviate the slave debate, The U.S. Civil War eventually broke out, which occurred in the first quarter action phase of this synodic cycle.

"The slaver issue and the following Civil War is fitting to this compounded Pallas-Saturn-Pluto-Uranus synod. Saturn-Pluto: Administration controlling power:Uranus: radical change, breaking the conformity of the past.Pallas, the female warrior: judgment, standoffs, sidetaking in its lower octave; and in its higher octave - intelligent creative solution beyond the duality of sidetaking."

LB ~ Thanks for you astrological thoughts. Pisces certainly has to be key to the spiritual focus of these people doesn't it. Maybe when aided and abetted by planets in both Aquarius and Capricorn Pisces "influence" somehow grows stronger in some indivduals, where the situation/environment/background is ripe for such a thing? Just another thought. :-)

Leonard Cohen can do no wrong for me also - though I do usually prefer to hear others singing his songs.

mike ~ It was a magical musical time and the Everly Bros came along at exactly the right time to become part of that huge wave of a new kind of music. Due to the high quality of their singing and harmonies, they're still fondly remembered by many

mike (again) ~ Yes, you're probably right on the 7 to 10 years later thing. Maybe the mini-spiritual uplift was a precurser to what came later. Some astrologers do say that certain major aspects can be felt quite sometime before they actually occur.

That whole mid 19th century period, as you've said, was steeped in different kinds of "spiritual" investigations and fads. The Theosophists were part of that too I guess (I'm not a fan of their style though).

The Uranus/Pluto and Uranus/Saturnsynodic cycles would be part of it all, but there's nothing really "spiritual" about those planets - they'd be working in concert with Pisces or Neptune to bring about any new spiritual "effect" would they not? Or maybe Jupiter I suppose, but somehow I don't see Jupiter as spiritual - more as relating to organised religion. Maybe I'm mistaken on that.

mike (again) ~ Just had a thought while munching on a sandwich - 1844 was the year of birth of these spiritually-minded people I mentioned, but their impact, major or minor, on the world would not be felt until some years later.People born under the synods mentioned would have their impact maybe a couple of decades later than the aspects, but theirs would be a different kind of impact?

I think it should be mentioned that Song of Bernadette is more Jennifer Warnes' song that it is Leonard Cohen's. It is based on her own vision that she had at a young age and she wrote the music, with Leonard assisting on some of the lyrics. To say that it was written by Leonard Cohen is very misleading and unfair to the immensely talented Jennifer Warnes.

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About Me

Also answers to Ann or Annie or even Twilight Annie (sounds like a character from Dickens - or Damon Runyan!)
British-born, living in the USA since 2004, US citizen since 2008.
Self-taught non-professional dabbler in astrology, which took up most of the blog-space here from Aug. 2006 to Aug. 2012. The blog now covers more general topics, along with occasional astrology- related posts. Archives can be accessed easily via links in the sidebar.